Handheld Addict

Friday, March 13, 2009

Blastworks

So my 8 year old nephew got a Wii game: Blastworks. And he was kind enough to loan it to me.

I'd heard lotsa good things about the game; check out some reviews and they give Blastworks glowing marks.

But I have to say, I'm just not digging it.

Blastworks is a side-scrolling shoot-em-up, or shmup as they say... the big difference between this game and any other shmup is that you can stick the enemies you kill to your ship, making this big junk-pile mess of a ship. It's a really novel and neat idea.

Hearing about this game, I was wondering, how does this work? How do you know that you've killed an enemy and you can stick it to your ship... there must be some really obvious tell-tale sign so that you're not just kamikazi-ing into them and they shoot you point blank if you're wrong? Well, yes & no..... there is a little health meter for whichever enemy you're targeting in the bottom corner of the screen. But with the frantic amount of bullets and falling enemies, it's really hard to look at the corner of the screen.

That's the other way to tell if an enemy can be scooped up and made part of your ship: they sort of do this downward curve falling motion. But it's not easy to tell if they're dead or simply flying downward. It can be a costly mistake to be wrong.

So far I've only played 10 minutes of it. That's not really a fair amount of time to make a final judgement on a game. I like shmups, but in Blastworks I can't tell what's an alive enemy, what's a dead enemy, what I can add to my ship and what's a bullet that'll kill me.... it's just a big mess. After 10 minutes I felt done with it.

I will definetely give it another try, but I'd advise giving this a rent first unless you can get it really cheap. I get the feeling this is the type of game people will either love or hate.